Stray Kids one shots #2 || honeyndwild

Jeongin | crying throug the bathroom wall

✨ HAPPY ENDING ✨
Summary: the walls in Jeongin's flat are extremely thin, and one night he hears his neighbour crying while taking the shower. When it happens a few more times, Jeongin decides to reach out.

(First time trying to write a story without y/n and using "they" pronounce.)

When it happens for the first time, Jeongin barely notices it. He spends his evening in his small flat, drinking beer and watching some random car renovation shows. The TV is loud enough, and sitting there in his kitchen-living room area, the only thing he hears is the loud talking of two MC on the screen.

He finds out about it when the need to go to the bathroom becomes unbearable, and he finally slides off his armchair and wobbles into his tiny bathroom.

He doesn't hear it while he washes his hands, his eyes fixated on the reflection in the mirror. He got a perm a few days ago, his long bangs became short and curly, a spontaneous desire to change something, ANYTHING in the way he was looking.

When the water stops dropping, when he dries his hands with a towel and the silence settles in, he finally catches it, that strange sound.

Someone crying behind the wall.

More precisely, his neighbour crying behind the wall.

In the similarly small bathroom behind this wall (Jeongin knows that because his bathroom barely fits him), someone is taking a shower and crying their eyes out.

Through the muffled sound of running water, through the echo from his TV and music playing, through the thickness (or rather finesse) of the wall, he hears cries. Sobs, nose blowing, weeping and indistinct mumbles.

The sounds scare the heck out of him. Anxiety creeps in, making his slightly tipsy mind go wild, imagining all the bloody scenarios which could lead his neighbour to a state they were in right now.

But then a glance in the mirror surprisingly sobers him, returning to reality.

Everyone cries in the bathroom. Because of a bad day, because of fear, because they are sad, because of longing or happiness or because they just feel like it.

Jeongin himself cries in the bathroom too. Very rarely, if being honest. But still, he does.

His neighbour might just have a bad day, he thinks, when he glances at himself for the last time before turning the lights off and exiting the bathroom.

Yeah, right, his neighbour just had a bad day.

Crying is not bad.

They'll get over it.

Everything will be fine.

Until it happens again.

This time, Jeongin brushes his teeth. A blue, minty goo drips from his mouth on his chin and sink, making his blurred reflection in the mirror look even stranger.

(It's still okay, he thinks. The day was awful, the work was too hard, and he's just tired. He can be a little relaxed, can't he?)

He hears cries the second he spits the last gulp of water and taps his wet chin with a soft towel.

They are muffled, the cries from the other side of the bathroom wall. They mix with the sounds of water running and a song playing in the background, and still, they are definitely cries, and Jeongin feels a lump forming in his throat.

It's only been 2 days, and his neighbour is crying again.

What the hell is happening in there?